A monster most every weekday. Three adventure seeds a post.
Because Pathfinder and 3.5 are more fun than work.
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Friday, October 7, 2016

Giant Muckdweller & Muckdweller

Muckdwellers and giant muckdwellers might be getting a bad
rap.They’re often described as pretty
simple, having only a rudimentary intelligence and the barest sketch of a
society.But they've actually got Int
9—the same as lizardfolk, and basically the same as your average human—and Wis
12.So they’re no dummies. It’s just that, since they’re Cha 7, they
likely don't have the strongest personalities or much of a desire to mingle.

Why am I bringing this up?Well, because it’s nice to have in your back pocket.Chances are you’ll just be using muckdwellers
as a random encounter or side trek.But
the potential for surprise is
there—given the right trigger.

Maybe one of the characters drops a charm on one, only to discover it’s quite intelligent and
talkative…or your sorcerer hurls some insults in Draconic only to have even
filthier insults hurled back…or the PCs try to rob a lizardfolk town’s “stables,”
only to discover that the compound is actually a separate village, and the
giant muckdwellers therein are no ordinary mounts…Suddenly it's a different adventure. You know how Terry Pratchett’s humanoids have
a way of surprising their human neighbors, or how a single charm person spell in the course of the Dragonlance playtest
changed how the playtesters (and later novel readers) saw gully dwarves?That could happen with muckdwellers in your
game.

Three times in four, it won't come up.The hungry muckdwellers will spray their
blinding spray, the PCs will return fire, and in a few short rounds the
encounter will be over.But the potential is there, and that’s good
enough for me.

Obviously you know how to use muckdwellers in swamp and
jungle encounters, so here are a few slightly more unusual places you might
find them:

A malfunctioning
magical artifact teleported the battle-damaged galleon Heart of the Pegasus far inland, deep in a marshy wetland.The muckdwellers who found the ship, having
never seen anything larger than a skiff before, became enchanted by their
discovery and have lovingly restored it.The Heart is now their
(somewhat listing) castle—much to the confusion of the intelligent (and still
malfunctioning) artifact.

The ratfolk-led Guild
of Ragpickers & Muckrakers goes on strike.A nest of dark nagas discreetly promises the
town fathers that they will “resolve” the situation. But the giant muckdwellers the nagas sneak
into the city aren’t schooled in the finer points of strikebreaking and they
begin eating the ratfolk citizenry.

Oni pleasure barges
create a lot of waste as they soar through the night sky.In many of these floating palaces
muckdwellers toil at the pumps and in the bilges, talking care of the giant
vessels’ more menial tasks.Adventurers experienced
and brave enough to fight oni will likely have little difficulty defeating a
swam of muckdwellers in combat, but more savvy parties will work out ways to
sneak past, sabotage, or recruit the lizard creatures.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5
175

Apparently I had sewage on the brain today.

Also, just for kicks I was Googling the Irish derogatory
term “muck savage” when I came across a Dr. Mucksavage at U. Penn who is (I am
not kidding) a urologist.Aptonym
much?You do you, Dr. M.!

Looks like my sass from last entry struck a nerve!Lots of people wrote into defend the honor of
the giant mantis shrimp.(I
got nothin’ but love for y’all, myth-lord!)Check out their responses here.

By the way, please forgive the occasional typos. I am aware of them, but disagreements between MS Word and the Blogger template make my entries nearly impossible to edit once posted. I blame gremlins. You can find a more polished version of this blog over on Tumblr.